Monday, February 16, 2009

He's just the most visible example

As described by the New York Times' David Carr --

Sensing the thickening gloom, Mr. Griffeth pivoted away to Mr. [Nassim] Taleb and said, “You’re not as bearish as Nouriel, are you?” Well yes, as a matter of fact he was. “We have the same people in charge, those who did not see the crisis coming,” he said.

This is one of outstanding facts of the current economic crisis: the complete lack of political accountability for it. We'll probably never know the relative weights of wine and cold medicine in the problems of Japanese Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa at the G7 news conference in Rome on Saturday. But is he any more out of it than his fellow ministers and central bankers?

UPDATE: The finance minister has resigned. And we've replaced the footage with an uncopyrighted version. More here.

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